How schools can raise achievement

Peter Wilby (Comment, 5 March) is right to say Britain's historic inequality is the root cause of most middle-class angst over state education. However, he underestimates the capacity of progressive school admission policies to raise achievement, extend opportunity, liberate talent and reduce inequality. Designating mixed catchment areas for primary schools, linking secondary schools with balanced feeder primaries, dealing even more firmly with the hypocrisy that underpins much covert selection, and transforming the remaining wholly selective schools into sixth-form colleges (or 14-19 academies) would help to make British state schools the best in the world. It would also extend real parental choice, as there would be far more schools in which all parents had confidence.

Hierarchical and selective secondary school structures simply entrench privilege. Segregating children into successes and failures intensifies inequality. A big step forward would be to act on early day motion 867, which calls for an end to public testing at 11. The most successful school systems celebrate all children's achievements; they don't label them failures before their 11th birthday. David Chaytor MPLabour, Bury North

The self-serving letter (6 March) from the "faith leaders" defending their right to select the pupils in their schools on the basis of religion was to be expected. The Liberal Democrats' proposals to stop this unfair and dangerous practice represents some progress, but when are we going to have a political party with the courage to face down the threats and demands of religious bodies? When will we have a politician who is prepared to challenge the inflated claims made by churches about the "ethos" of success that depends almost entirely on their ability to cream off the brightest and best-supported pupils? It isn't just selection that needs to be challenged, but the very concept of separating children by their parents' religion at a time when they should be getting to know each other on a daily basis. The artificial get-togethers that the churches arrange between their schools actually make the problem worse - they encourage the idea among children that their religion represents a significant barrier between them. Terry SandersonPresident, National Secular Society

Bill Bradbury (Letters, March 6) writes that "funding schools according to the deprivation of their intake would make pupils from deprived families more attractive to schools", and then asks "who will grasp these nettles?" I am writing this on the train to Harrogate, where the Lib Dems will propose a £2.5bn pupil premium, aimed at the most deprived in society, raising funding for these pupils to levels seen in private schools. Prateek BuchLoughton, Essex